Speakers 2014

Herman Van Rompuy (video address)

President, European Council

Elected as the first full-time President of the European Council in November 2009, Herman Van Rompuy took office when the Lisbon Treaty came into force on 1 December 2009. In 2012, he was re-elected for a second term starting on 1 June 2012 and running until 30 November 2014. At the time of his first election, Herman Van Rompuy was Prime Minister of Belgium. Prior to that he had served in Belgium as Speaker of the House of Representatives (2007-2008) and in several government positions, including as Vice-Prime Minister and Minister of Budget (1993-1999), Minister of State (2004) and Secretary of State for Finance and Small Businesses (1988).

A former economist at the National Bank of Belgium, Herman Van Rompuy began his political career in 1973 as national vice-president of his party’s youth council. He has held various responsibilities within his party and in the Belgian Parliament, serving in turn as Senator (1988-1995) and Member of Parliament (1995-2009). Herman Van Rompuy holds a Bachelor in Philosophy, and a Master in Applied Economics from the university K.U. Leuven. He was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, on 31 October 1947, and is married with Geertrui Windels; they have four children and four grandchildren.

Joaquín Almunia

VP European Commission, European Commissioner for Competition

Joaquín Almunia Amann is a Spanish politician and member of the European Commission, responsible for Competition under the second mandate of President Barroso. He was previously responsible for Economic and Monetary Affairs in Barroso’s previous mandate. He graduated with degrees in economics and law in 1971 and 1972, respectively, from the University of Deusto in Bilbao, and completed follow-up studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, France, from 1970 to 1971. He also completed a program at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University for senior managers in government in 1991.

Androulla Vassiliou

Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth

Previously, Ms. Vassiliou served as Commissioner for Health, from February 2008 to end 2009. Ms. Vassiliou studied law and international affairs in London and practiced law in Cyprus for 20 years (1968-1988).Before her appointment to the European Commission, Ms. Vassiliou was actively involved in politics in Cyprus. She was twice elected to the Cypriot House of Representatives: in 1996 and 2001 – representing the Movement of United Democrats (affiliated to the European Liberal Democrats and Reform Party ELDR).

Erkki Liikanen

Governor, Central Bank of Finland

Erkki Liikanen became Governor of the Bank of Finland in July, 2004, Member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (2004–present) and Governor of the International Monetary Fund for Finland (2004–present). He led the group which drafted the ”Report of the European Commission’s High-level Expert Group on Bank Structural Reform”. Prior he was the first Finnish Member of the European Commission (1994), responsible for Budget, Personnel and administration.

Jan Muehlfeit

Chairman, Microsoft Europe

ICT industry veteran almost 19 years in MS. Served in different positions in MS Czech/Slovak subsidiary between 1993 – 2000. Led CEE region in 2000-05. Vice President of Microsoft’s Public Sector team in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in 2005, Vice President, EMEA Corporate & Government Strategy in 2006 and later Chairman Europe, Microsoft Corporation, Mr. Muehlfeit is a Vice-Chair of the Academy of Business in Society (ABiS), board member of JA, Co-Chairman of the European e-Skills Association and a member of the Board of AIESEC and Ovum advisory body. Jan Muehlfeit has been serving in different advisory boards of several European governments in the field of ICT, national competitiveness and education. He also represents Microsoft on the TABD, the Transatlantic Business Dialogue and is involved in his advisory capacity in different projects of WEF, OECD and European Policy Center (EPC). He is also a board member of Czech National museum and member of IBLF Leaders Council. He graduated from Czech Technical University and later on completed executive development programs at Wharton, LSE and Harvard.

James G. Stavridis

Former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Dean The Fletcher School

James Stavridis is the incumbent Dean of the Fletcher School. A retired Admiral in the U.S. Navy, he led the NATO Alliance in global operations from 2009 to 2013 as Supreme Allied Commander. He also served as Commander of U.S. Southern Command, with responsibility for all military operations in Latin America from 2006-2009. A Fletcher PhD, he won the Gullion prize as outstanding student and has published five books and over a hundred articles. His focus is on innovation, strategic communication and planning, and creating security through international, interagency, and public/private partnerships in this turbulent 21st century.

Augusto Lopez-Claros

Director of Global Indicators and Analysis, World Bank Group

Augusto Lopez-Claros became the Director of Global Indicators and Analysis at the World Bank Group in March 2011. Previously he was Chief Economist and Director of the Global Competitiveness Program at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, where he was the editor of the Global Competitiveness Report, the Forum’s flagship publication, as well as a number of regional economic reports. Before joining the Forum he was Executive Director with Lehman Brothers (London) and Senior International Economist. He was the International Monetary Fund’s resident representative in the Russian Federation during 1992-95.

João Vale de Almeida

EU Ambassador to the United States

Ambassador João Vale de Almeida has been the Head of the Delegation of the European Union to the United States since 2010. Prior to his appointment in Washington as the European Union’s Ambassador, he served as the Director General for External Relations at the European Commission, the European Union’s executive body. From 2004 to 2009 Amb. Vale de Almeida was the Head of Cabinet (Chief of staff and main adviser) for European Commission President José Manuel Barroso. Earlier in his career in the European institutions, Amb. Vale de Almeida held several senior positions in the European Commission and the Economic and Social Committee.

Jan Krzysztof Bielecki

Chairman, Economic Council to the Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland

Jan Krzysztof Bielecki is a Polish liberal politician and economist. A leading figure of the Gdańsk-based Liberal Democratic Congress in the early 1990s, Bielecki served as Prime Minister of Poland for most of 1991. In his post-political career, Bielecki served as president of Bank Pekao between 2003 to 2010, and presently serves as the chairman of the Polish Institute of International Affairs.

Antonio Vitorino

President of Notre Europe – Jacques Delors Institute

António Vitorino, a lawyer by profession, is President of think tank Notre Europe. In 1999 António Vitorino was appointed European Commissioner for Justice and Internal Affairs, a post he occupied until 2004. As a representative of the European Commission he took part in both the convention which drew up the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Convention on the Future of Europe. Prior to being elected MEP in 1994, he served as Portuguese Minister for Parliamentary Affairs in the government of Mario Soares (1983-85), and as a judge on Portugal’s constitutional court (1989-94). In 1995 he became Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister of Portugal.

Florin Talpes

CEO, Bitdefender

Mr. Talpes is CEO of Bitdefender, one of the industry’s fastest and most effective lines of internationally certified security software. In 1990 together with his wife Mariuca, he created SOFTWIN, the biggest Romanian software and services company. Founded in 2001 Bitdefender is now a company with its solutions distributed by a global network of value-added distribution and reseller partners in more than 100 countries worldwide. Being one of the Romanian software industry pioneers, Mr. Talpes was also the founder and former President of the National Association of Software Services Industry (ANIS) in Romania. As President, he led a team to develop the National Strategy for software services in Romania.

Klaus Welle

Secretary General of the European Parliament

Mr. Welle has had a long career in the European Parliament. To date, Mr. Welle has been Secretary General of the European Parliament since 2009. In this capacity he is the European Parliament’s most senior official. From 2007 until 2009 he was the head of the Cabinet of the President of the European Parliament. From 2004 until 2007, he was the Director-General for Internal Policies at the European Parliament. From 1999 until 2003, he was the Secretary-General of the EPP-ED Group in the European Parliament. Mr. Welle holds a degree in Economics from he University of Witten/Herdecke, Germany.

Luuk van Middelaar

Speechwriter and Advisor to the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy

Luuk van Middelaar is a Dutch political philosopher and currently speechwriter and an advisor to the president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy. Prior, he was speechwriter in the private office of European Commissioner Frits Bolkestein (2002-2004) and politcal secretary for the liberal VVD group in Dutch parliament, advising group leader Jozias van Aartsen (2004-2006). He is author of the books “Passage to Europe” (2012), for which he was awarded the Socrates Prize for the best Dutch philosophy book and the European Book Prize 2012, and “Politicide” (1999). He had a foreign affairs column in NRC Handelsblad, and published articles in Le Monde, the Wall Street Journal, Die Welt. He holds a PhD in philosophy.

Marco Magnani

Senior Research Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School

Mr. Magnani worked in investment banking for over 15 years, on Wall Street at Credit Suisse First Boston and JPMorgan as Vice President and in Europe at Mediobanca as Managing Director. His research work, “Italy 2030,” focuses on key long-term economic reforms in Italy. He was appointed Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, is on the WEF Global Agenda Council for Banking and Capital Markets, is President of the Board of American Field Service Italy, serves on the Executive Board and on the Educational Activities Committee of the National Federation of Cavalieri del Lavoro. He is member of the Aspen Institute, Institute for International Affairs, Chatham House, and Young Leaders of the Council for US & Italy.

Peter Woodard Galbraith

Member of the Vermont Senate

Peter Galbraith is an author, academic, commentator, politician, policy advisor, and former United States diplomat. From 1993 to 1998, he served as the first U.S. Ambassador to Croatia, where he was co-mediator and principal architect of the 1995 Erdut Agreement that ended the war in that country. His testimonies helped reveal ethnic cleansing of its Serb minority, the joint criminal enterprising being found by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in 2011. He has been a member of the Vermont Senate since 2011.

José Antonio Marco-Izquierdo

Partner at Magnum Capital

José Antonio Marco-Izquierdo is a Partner at Magnum Capital, the leading private equity firm in Iberia with $1bn AuM. Since joining Magnum in late 2006, Mr. Marco has been involved in various investments opportunities. He serves as a Director of Iberwind and Iberchem.
Prior to joining Magnum, Mr. Marco worked for McKinsey & Co. in Spain, Portugal and UK since 1999, where he served as a consultant for the Corporate Finance & Strategy Practice and Financial Institutions Practice. Earlier in his career, Mr. Marco worked for the Investment Banking Division of Merrill Lynch and the Private Equity of Lehman Brothers in London.
Mr. Marco has an MBA from the MIT (Goldman Sachs Finance Award) and an MSc in Business Administration from Universidad Comercial de Deusto, where he graduated first in class. He is also a professor of Strategy and M&A at ICADE.

Esko Aho

Vice president for Corporate Relations and Responsibility, Nokia
Former Prime Minister Finland

Esko Aho is Senior Fellow at Harvard University. From 2009 to 2012, he was the Executive Vice President of Corporate Relations and Responsibility at Nokia Corporation, where he headed Nokia’s government and public affairs function, and oversaw the company’s global policies and activities regarding sustainable development and social responsibility. In his prior government service career, he was elected Prime Minister in 1991 and under his leadership Finland joined the European Union. During his presidency of Sitra, Finnish Innovation Fund, Finland’s economic Russian strategy was published. He chaired the steering group that submitted the Proposal for Finland’s National Innovation Strategy in 2008.

Johan C. Verbeke

Belgian Ambassador to the United States

Johan Verbeke is the current Belgian ambassador to the United States. His prior appointments include serving as the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative and Head of the UN Observer Mission to Georgia, Belgian’s permanent representative to the United Nations and its Security Council, and Chef de Cabinet of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He also served as Chairman of the Security Council Sanctions Committees on Côte d’Ivoire, Iran and Al Qaida/Taliban, leader of the Security Council Mission to Kosovo, Facilitator of the President of the General Assembly for the negotiation of General Assembly-resolutions on Millennium Development Goals-implementation and Economic and Social Council-reform.

David Wright

Senior Vice President, Global Sponsorship at MLS

David Wright oversees new business efforts for some of the premier soccer properties in the United States (including Major League Soccer, U.S. Soccer Federation, Mexican National Team, multiple CONCACAF properties and Chivas de Guadalajara; 8 properties in total). In addition, Wright manages a Partnership Marketing team charged with day-to-day management, growth and retention of over 40 MLS / SUM partners. These partnerships, which continue to be the lynchpin to the sport’s growth on and off the field, include industry leading companies such as adidas, Allstate, Anheuser-Busch, AT&T, Castrol, Gatorade, The Home Depot, Panasonic, Pepsi, Visa, Volkswagen and Xbox 360.

Vesna Pusić

First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Republic of Croatia

Ms. Pusić is the First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of Croatia. After becoming involved in politics in the early 1990s, Pusić served three consecutive terms as MP, having been elected to the Croatian Parliament in the 2000, 2003, and 2007 elections. During her 2008–2011 parliament term she chaired the parliamentary committee for tracking the progress of Croatia’s accession negotiations with the European Union. Pusić also held the post of Vice-President of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party (ELDR).

Dimitris Avramopoulos

Minister of National Defense, Greece

Dimitris Avramopoulos is a Greek politician and diplomat who has been the Minister of National Defence of Greece since 2013. Previously, he was Mayor of Athens for eight years, and has served in a number of cabinet posts, including as Minister for Foreign Affairs, Minister of Health and Social Solidarity, and Minister of Tourism Development.

Nusret Cömert

Senior Advanced Leadership Fellow, Harvard University

Nusret Cömert has been in the upstream, midstream and downstream of energy industry for 30 years. He had been supporting Royal Dutch Shell’s activities in the region for developing upstream oil and gas positions and additional gas supplies for Turkey and Europe. Comert has led the natural gas sector’s liberalization process in Turkey and is the founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Shell Energy A.S., the first private company importing and trading natural gas in Turkey. He has also led Shell’s entry in deep water exploration in the Mediterranean and West Black Sea as well as Shale Oil and Shale Gas exploration in South East Turkey in partnership with TPAO, the national upstream company. In Shell, Comert was an Exploration Leadership Team Member in Middle East and North Africa; a Gas and Power Leadership Team Member in South East Europe. Comert gained broad experience from the development of the Trans Caspian Gas Project, gas and power production, storage, LNG and distribution projects and initiated the Turkey-Greece Gas Pipeline Project, currently supplying gas to Greece via Turkey.Comert has been an Independent Board Member of Akfen Holding A.S. since May 2012.

Vivien Schmidt

Professor of International Relations, Boston University

Vivien Schmidt is Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration, Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Boston University, and Founding Director of BU’s Center for the Study of Europe. Recent honors, fellowships, and awards include an honorary doctorate from the FreeUniversity of Brussels (ULB), Senior Visiting Research Scholar at the Free University of Berlin, and the prestigious Belgian Franqui Interuniversity Chair held at the Free University of Brussels and Louvain. Prof. Schmidt has also been a visiting professor or scholar at Sciences-Po Paris, LUISS in Rome, Oxford, Cambridge, the Copenhagen Business School, and the European University Institute. She has published widely on European political economy, institutions, and democracy as well as lately on the Eurozone crisis. Recent books include the forthcoming Resilient Liberalism: European Political Economy through Boom and Bust (co-edited, Cambridge 2013), Debating Political Identity and Legitimacy in the European Union (co-edited, Routledge 2011), Democracy in Europe (Oxford 2006), and The Futures of European Capitalism (Oxford 2002). She received her MA and PhD from the University of Chicago, her BA from Bryn Mawr College, and also attended Sciences-Po Paris.

Pierre Cailleteau

Amundi Asset Management

Pierre Cailleteau is the Head of Institutional Clients and Sovereign Entities at Amundi Asset Management. From 2010 to 2013, he was a Managing Director at Lazard in the sovereign advisory team. In 2004, he was appointed Global Head of Sovereign Ratings at Moody’s in London for six years. From 2002 to 2004, he was head of country risk at Calyon (CACIB). From 1999 to 2002, he took part in the creation of the Financial Stability Board, the international financial regulatory body, at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Mr. Cailleteau is a graduate of Sciences Po (IEP Paris) and holds master’s degrees in public and commercial law.

Arnaud Danjean

Chair of the European Subcommittee on Security and Defense, Member European Parliament

Arnaud Danjean is a French politician, MEP of the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats), and elected Member of the Bourgogne Regional Council. He is elected to the European Parliament Subcommittee on Security and Defence, subcommittee of the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs. And further, he is rapporteur of a 2012 European Parliament Resolution on the implementation of the Common Security and Defence Policy. Prior to his work with the European Parliament, he was Adviser in the private office of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs (2005-2007) and represented the Secretary-General of the High Representative for the CFSP in Kosovo (2004-2005).

Ludovic Blecher

Managing Director at Google Fund-AIPG

Ludovic Blecher is director of the Digital Innovation Press Fund Google&AIPG, a joint effort of Google and a French publishing trade group, the Association of Political and General Information. The fund will disburse 60 million euros (approximately $80 million) over the next three years to French media organizations with ideas for innovation in digital media. Blecher previously was in charge of digital strategy for the French newspaper «Libération». He’s a member of the French Digital Council (CNNum) an independent advisory commission appointed by presidential decree. Ludovic is a 2013 fellow at Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

Dr. Werner Eichhorst

Director of Labor Policy, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Germany

Werner Eichhorst is the Director of Labor Policy Europe at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) based in Bonn, Germany– one of the premier think tanks focused on the analysis of global labor markets. His main research area is the comparative analysis of labor market institutions and performance as well as the political economy of labor market reform strategies. Prior to his work at IZA, he was doctoral and post-doctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne and project director at the Bertelsmann Foundation, a private think tank in Germany, where he was responsible for comparative analyses of the German labor market and related policy areas. Mr. Eichhorst holds a Ph. D. in Public Administration from the University of Konstanz, Germany.

Muriel Rouyer

Professor of Political Science at the University of Nantes (France) and Adjunct Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School

Muriel Rouyer is Professor of Political Science at the University of Nantes (France) and an Adjunct Professor of Public Policy at HKS. A specialist of politics in the European Union, her research focuses on judicial and transnational democracy and mobilizations, constitutionalism, European and French feminism, and French politics. She received her PhD in political studies from Sciences-Po Paris. Formerly she was a General Secretary of the Observatoire National de la Parité entre les Femmes et les Hommes and worked at the European Parliament. Involved in NGOs helping students escape the Balkan wars in the 1990s, she has an extensive international teaching experience. Her recent published work includes Regards sur le cosmopolitisme europeen (Insights into European Cosmopolitanism, Peter Lang 2011) and “The Strauss-Kahn Affair and the Culture of Privacy: Mistreating and Misrepresenting Women in the French Public Sphere”, Women’s Studies International Forum, 2013, Vol.41 (3) pp. 187-196. She is currently working on her book on Transnational Democracy in Europe (forthcoming, Presses de Sciences-Po)“.

Ali Miraj

Director in Syndicated Finance at ING Commercial Banking

Having qualified as a Chartered Accountant, Ali Miraj currently works as a Director in Syndicated Finance at ING Commercial Banking specialising in infrastructure and project finance.He was the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for the marginal seat of Watford at the 2005 General Election. Prior to that he contested the 2001 General Election in Aberavon, South Wales and served as a Councillor (London Borough of Hillingdon) from 1998-2002 having been elected at the age of 23.

He has been a governor of two schools and served as an adviser to the Conservative Party Foreign Affairs Team from 2001-2003. He has presented the Islam Channel’s flagship political programme, “In Focus” and has been a regular contributor to the media on domestic political issues and foreign affairs. He served as a Board Member of both the Conservative Party’s Policy Commissions on Quality of Life and International and National Security (2005-2007).

He is a Board Member of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, an ambassador for the charity “War Child”, and was a member of the UK Board of the Abraham Fund Initiatives, a charity based in Israel that fosters co-operation between Jews and Arabs through grassroots projects. He has served on the Main Committee of the London Society Chartered Accountants and is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of International Bankers and a Freeman of the City of London.

Anita Elberse

Harvard Business School

Anita Elberse is the Lincoln Filene Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. An award-winning teacher and scholar, Professor Elberse develops and teaches a course on Strategic Marketing in Creative Industries, covering the businesses of entertainment, media, and sports. She is the faculty chair of a new executive education program on the business of entertainment. In her research, she aims to understand what drives the success of products in the entertainment, media, sports, and other creative industries, and how firms can develop effective marketing strategies for such products. She is the author of the book, Blockbusters: Hit-making, Risk-taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment.

Willy Shih

Harvard Business School

Willy Shih is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Management Practice in Business Administration. He is part of the Technology and Operations Management Unit, and teaches in MBA and Executive Education Programs. His expertise is in manufacturing and product development, and he has written or co-authored numerous teaching materials. His paper, “Restoring American Competitiveness,” co-authored with Gary Pisano, won the 2009 McKinsey Award. His recent book, “Producing Prosperity – Why America Needs a Manufacturing Renaissance,” co-authored with Gary Pisano, has called attention to the link between manufacturing and innovation. He is the author of “Back Bay Battery,” a best-selling innovation simulation.

François Véron

Founder Newfund

François Veron, 44, has been investing in innovation for the last 15 years. Previously, he had worked for the French Ministry of Finance then in corporate functions at Casino, the second-leading French listed food retail company.

In 2008 he launched Newfund, a Paris based VC financed by entrepreneurs up to EUR 72m. Newfund invests in all types of sectors, usually at an early stage, and supports companies where entrepreneurs with leadership capabilites are fully committed.

Sarah Pinto Peyronel

Vice President, Great Hill Partners

Sarah is responsible for originating and evaluating investment opportunities in the media, Internet, information services and software sectors. She serves on the Board of Directors of Legacy.com and is a board observer of IntApp and Jobing.com.

Prior to joining Great Hill in 2010, Sarah was an Associate at Bridgepoint, a European middle-market private equity fund. At Bridgepoint, her responsibilities included screening and evaluating potential investments, executing transactions and working with existing portfolio companies, primarily in the consumer, retail and healthcare sectors. Previously, Sarah worked at Goldman Sachs as an Investment Banking Analyst, in the European consumer retail group as well as in the Paris execution team.

Sarah graduated from HEC Paris with a Master of Science in Management, with a concentration in Finance and she received a Master in Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Salomé Cisnal de Ugarte

Attorney at Mayer Brown

Dr. Salomé Cisnal de Ugarte is a member of Mayer Brown’s groups based in Brussels. She is admitted to the Brussels’ and Madrid bars and specialises in EU antitrust/competition and international trade law. Dr. Cisnal de Ugarte advises international companies on all areas of EU antitrust and competition law. Her practice also spans international trade negotiations and proceedings, as well as litigation before the European courts. She has particular sector expertise in banking & financial services, consumer & luxury goods, food, media & technology and energy. serves on the Board of the American Chamber of Commerce to the EU (AmCham EU) as a Vice Chair and on the Board of the Harvard Club of Belgium as its President.

Pierre-Andre Chiappori

Professor of Economics, Columbia University

A graduate from Ecole Normale Supérieure, agrégé in mathematics, PhD in economics, Pierre-André Chiappori has been a Directeur de Recherches (Senior Researcher) at the French National Research Center and a Professor at ENSAE from 1991 to 1997. He then became a Professor at the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago and an editor of the Journal of Political Economy. He is currently the E. Rowan and Barbara Steinschneider Professor of Economics at Columbia University (New York). A Fellow of the Econometric Society, the European Economic Association and the Society of Labor Economists, Pierre-André Chiappori is the author of more than one hundred articles published in international journals (Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review, Econometrica, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Economic Theory,…) and in collective books. He is the author of five books, among which Economics of the Family (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2014), and has co-edited with Christian Gollier Insurance: Theoretical Analysis and Policy Implications (MIT Press), which has been awarded by the American Risk and Insurance Association the 2008 Kulp-Wright Book Award of Best Book on Risk and Insurance.

Gabriel Biris

Founding Partner Biris Goran

Gabriel Biris is the managing and founding partner of Biris Goran, Romania’s foremost tax and legal advisory. Gabriel is specialized in taxation, mergers and acquisitions and is considered by Chambers&Partners the “undisputed leader in the tax field” with an important contribution to the 2004 introduction of Romania’s current flat tax regime. He interviews and publishes widely at home and abroad, focusing on improving the fiscal legislation and business competitiveness in the region as well as EU tax legislation.

In addition, Gabriel Biris has also joined the political and public life. He co-authored the tax provisions of the 2004-2008 governing coalition’s electoral program and their subsequent implementation, is a member of the Aspen Institute and a vice-president of the “Forta Civica” political party, for which he was also a parliamentary candidate in 2012. Also, as of 2010 Gabriel Biris became and Ambassador of “SOS Children’s Villages” Romania, one of the largest NGOs in the country that supports children from disadvantaged backgrounds. He is also involved with the work of the “Save Lives” Association in their efforts to build the first Center for Excellence in the early diagnosis and treatment of lymphoma.

Jeff Bennett

Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer at Raptor Sports Properties

Jeff Bennett serves as the CEO of Raptor Sports Properties. Raptor Sports Properties is a part of Raptor Group Holdings, diversified financial services firm that provides investment management and advisory services. The firm primarily invests in public and private equities across a broad spectrum of phases, sectors, geographies and asset classes. One of the most prominent investments of the group is in the leading Italian football team – AS Roma. As a CEO of Raptor Sports Properties, Mr Bennett is actively involved in helping AS Roma to increase its commercial revenues.With offices in London, New York and Boston, Raptor Sports Properties has extensive experience with some of the biggest sports and entertainment properties and agencies in the world, including Manchester United, Madison Square Garden, and the Boston Celtics. Jeff has enjoyed a successful career building and accelerating the growth of companies as an entrepreneur, operating executive and strategic business development specialist.Jeff earned his B.S. Degree, cum laude, from Bentley University.

Richard Motzkin

EVP & Managing Executive, Global Soccer at Wasserman Media Group

Richard Motzkin serves as EVP and Managing Executive of the Global Soccer Group. Motzkin is widely recognized as the preeminent soccer agent in the United States and with his Wasserman colleagues in the UK, he helps manage the overall strategy and direction of one of the most successful soccer practices in the world. Mr Motzkin was named the 25th most powerful person in U.S. soccer by Sports Illustarated. Prior to joining Wasserman, Motzkin founded SportsNet, Inc. in 1994 and began his company by representing many of the top stars from the 1994 US World Cup Team. During his tenure at SportsNet and Wasserman, Motzkin has negotiated some of the most lucrative and high-profile contracts in Major League Soccer history and has represented the #1 pick in the MLS SuperDraft 9 times in the past 12 years. Motzkin received his bachelor’s degree from University of California, Berkeley in 1986 and his law degree from Loyola Law School in 1989, where he was a charter member of the “Order of the Coif” honors society.

Geert Paemen

Head of Strategy and Alliances at the Telefónica Foundation

Geert joined the Telefonica Foundation in 2011, where she has been in charge of the corporate volunteering program, the Think Big Youth program and at present, Strategy and Alliances. The Telefonica Foundation is a not for profit entity financed by the Spanish digital Telco Telefonica, with projects in 20 countries, in Latin America and Europe. The Foundation’s activities focus on Education and Learning, more specifically on Educational Innovation, Digital and Life Skills in formal and informal learning environments, Art & Digital Culture and Corporate Volunteering. Telefonica is one of the promoting partners of the Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs, a multi-stakeholder partnership intended to increase ICT education and training, raise awareness of ICT as a career option and promote cross-border mobility of ICT employees.

Pierre Vimont

Secretary-General of the European External Action Service

Vimont holds a licence in law. He is a graduate of the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris and the École nationale d’administration. French President Nicolas Sarkozy appointed him to the position of Ambassador to the United States on 1 August 2007. On 25 October 2010, he was selected by the European Union’s (EU) High Representative to be the first Executive Secretary General of the European External Action Service, which began operation on 1 December 2010.

Vedran Perse

CEO of the Central Europe Oil Company

Vedran has more than 20 years’ experience with both national oil and private trading oil companies. He spent seventeen years at INA dd, the largest national oil company in the former Yugoslavia, including nine years as Deputy MD and Managing Director of INA’s oil and products trading operations based in London. For seven years, he was a partner at Deltagrip Trading LLP, one of the largest privately held petroleum products trading and midstream companies in Central Europe. Since October 2008, he has been CEO of the Central Europe Oil Company (“CEOC”), an upstream production company which is dedicated to increasing oil and gas production in Central and Eastern Europe. CEOC’s investors include Barclays Natural Resource Investments and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Richard Hook

COO, Max Petroleum

Mr Hook spent 27 years with Anadarko Petroleum in various positions as an Exploration Geologist and Manager. As Geological Supervisor for Anadarko Algeria in the early 1990’s, he was part of a team that made a series of major discoveries there. He later held positions as a Senior Manager of Southern US Exploration, North Africa and Middle East Exploration, and International Onshore Exploration world-wide for Anadarko. He also served as Vice President of International Business Development in the Middle East and Russia for Anadarko International Energy Company, based in London. In 2008 Mr Hook joined Max Petroleum, overseeing exploration work in the Pre-Caspian Basin of Kazakhstan and was named COO of Max in 2009. Mr Hook holds a Bachelor of Science in Geology from the University of Oregon, and a Master of Science in Geology from Oregon State University.

Liis Vihul

Ms. Liis Vihul works as a legal analyst in the Law and Policy Branch at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence and has been with the organization since 2008. She holds an MA in law from the University of Tartu, and an MSc in information security from the University of London. She has conducted legal research on various topics related to cyber security and cyber defence, such as the role and obligations of internet service providers in achieving cyber security, the privacy implications of network traffic monitoring, and the legal aspects of fighting botnets. Her current research is focused on the interplay between public international law and cyber operations, in particular the legal requirements for attributing cyber operations to States. She is also involved in planning and executing training on cyber issues for legal professionals. Ms. Vihul co-authored the book “International Cyber Incidents: Legal Considerations”. She was also the manager of the project which resulted in the Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare, published by Cambridge University Press in 2013, and has taken up the same role for its follow-on project Tallinn 2.0.

José Manuel Martínez Sierra

Jean Monnet ad Personam Professor in EU Law and Government, Director of the Real Colegio Complutense

José Manuel Martínez Sierra is Jean Monnet ad Personam Professor in EU Law and Government, Faculty affiliated and Co-chair of the Iberian Study Group at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies and Faculty Associate of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. He has a M.A. in Law, M.A. in Political Science and Sociology, a J.D. and a Ph.D. in Law (Doctor Europeus) from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He received his LL.M. Eur. from the Universidad de Alcalá and a Specialist Degree in International and Comparative law from the University of Amsterdam.

José served in a number of roles in international and national education advisory and executive positions. He was General Director for International Relations in the Spanish Ministry of Education and General Director of the Spanish Governmental Agency for the Internationalization of Spanish Universities. He was former member and president of the European Union High Level Group on Education and Training Policies and EU Education Committee, a member of the OCDE Education Policy Committee and former president of the Bologna Follow up Group. He was the UNESCO Spanish representative for Higher Education. He was member of the advisory council for the Ibero-American Educative Goals 2021 and a member of the Main Advisory Commission of the Andrés Bello Organization for educative, scientific, technological and cultural Latin American integration.

Carmen Reinhart

Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System, Harvard Kennedy School

Carmen M. Reinhart is the Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System at Harvard Kennedy School. She was formerly Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute and Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland. Earlier, she was chief economist and vice president at the investment bank Bear Stearns in the 1980s and spent several years at the International Monetary Fund. Reinhart’s work has helped to inform the understanding of financial crises for over a decade.Her best-selling book (with Kenneth S. Rogoff) entitled This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly documents the striking similarities of the recurring booms and busts that have characterized financial history.

David Thaw

Fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School

David Thaw is a law and technology expert whose research and scholarship examine the regulation of the Internet and computing technologies, with specific focus on cybersecurity regulation, cyber warfare, and cybercrime. He teaches at UConn Law School faculty and and continues to hold an appointment as an affiliated fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project. Prior, he reasearched and taught at the Maryland Cybersecurity Center, and practiced cybersecurity and privacy regulatory law at Hogan Lovells (formerly Hogan & Hartson) in Washington, DC. Professor Thaw is a frequent presenter on cybersecurity regulation, cyber warfare, and cybercrime, subjects that are the focus of his two recent articles, one published in 2013 in Northwestern University Law School’s Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology and another forthcoming in the Georgia State University Law Review. His forthcoming Article examines what lessons the cybersecurity rulemaking process in U.S. healthcare information security might teach for other industries and for rulemaking in technical fields generally. He has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives regarding his research on cybersecurity regulation and its implications for federal legislation. In July 2014, David will join the University of Pittsburgh as an assistant professor of law and information science.

Olena Tregub

Ukrainian civic entrepreneur

Olena is a DC-based Ukrainian media professional and a civic entrepreneur. She worked as a US foreign correspondent for the Ukrainian News Agency and a columnist at Kyiv Post, as well as a researcher on Ukraine for The New York Times. Olena’s publications on the Ukrainian domestic and international politics have appeared in a number of European and American media. She is also a co-founder of “Global Education Leadership” (www.GELead.org), an educational consulting that offers professional internship and study abroad programs for young North Americans in the CEE region. Olena is the World Economic Forum’s Global Shaper and a member of Young Atlanticists’ network of the Atlantic Council of the USA.

Olena is an active participant of various pro-democracy and pro-European civic initiatives in Ukraine. She was one the founders of the «We-Europeans» movement that continues to play an important role in the on-going Euromaidan protests in Ukraine.

Richard B. Freeman

Ascherman Chair in Economics at Harvard University

Richard B. Freeman is Ascherman Chair in Economics at Harvard University and Faculty co-Director of the Labor and Worklife Program at the Harvard Law School. He directs the Science and Engineering Workforce Project at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and is Senior Research Fellow in Labour Markets at the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance.
Professor Freeman is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science. He received the Mincer Lifetime Achievement Prize from the Society of Labor Economics in 2006. In 2007 he was awarded the IZA Prize in Labor Economics. In 2011 he was appointed Frances Perkins Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Nicholas Burns

Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government

Nicholas Burns is Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is Faculty Chair of the school’s Middle East Initiative, India & South Asia Program, and is director of the Future of Diplomacy Project. He writes a bi-weekly foreign affairs column for the Boston Globe. He is also Director of the Aspen Strategy Group and a Senior Counselor at the Cohen Group. He served in the United States Foreign Service for twenty-seven years until his retirement in April 2008. He was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 2005 to 2008. Prior to that, he was Ambassador to NATO (2001-2005), Ambassador to Greece (1997-2001), and State Department Spokesman (1995-1997). He worked on the National Security Council staff (1990-1995) where he was Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia Affairs and Special Assistant to President Clinton and, before that, Director for Soviet Affairs for President George H.W. Bush. Earlier in his career, he worked at the American Consulate General in Jerusalem and in the American Embassies in Egypt and Mauritania. He serves on the Board of several corporate and non-profit organizations.

Bernardino León

European Union Special Representative (EUSR) for the Southern Mediterranean region

Bernardino León is the European Union Special Representative (EUSR) for the Southern Mediterranean region. Mr. León was formerly Secretary General at the office of the Spanish Prime Minister, Sherpa for the G20, Advisor to the Special Envoy of the European Union for the Middle East, and Spanish Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. He holds a Master in Law from the University of Málaga and a Master in International Relations from the Center of International Studies in Barcelona.

Marc Rougier

Co-Founder and President Scoop.it

Marc Rougier is a repeat entrepreneur of the digital economy. Currently co-founder and president of Scoop.it, the leading publishing-by-curation platform for professionals and businesses, he specializes in early stage, Intellectual Property-strong ventures with international potential. He has co-founded 4 startups (including Meiosys, a software vendor in the virtualization space, acquired by IBM in 2005) and has experienced the startup scene in Asia, Europe and North America. He is actively involved in promoting entrepreneurship in the digital economy as a mentor, business angel and member of several associations including France Digitale and the TIC Valley. Twitter: @marcfuseki

Bruno Posset

VP Strategic Projects at Goss International

Bruno Posset is VP Strategic Projects at Goss International, a company of Shanghai Electric Group. Goss is a world leading supplier of equipment for the printing and packaging industry with manufacturing centers in North America, Europe and China. As part of his responsibilities Mr. Posset currently oversees the planning and realization of a new factory in Shanghai.Prior to joining Goss, Mr. Posset held operational and general management positions, both in Germany and the United States, primarily with companies focused on the manufacture of high precision machinery. Mr. Posset earned a masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Technische Universität München (TUM), Germany.

Roman Rubchenko

Mason Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School

Roman Rubchenko is a Mid-Career MPA and a Mason fellow at the Kennedy School of Government. He is interested in stimulating the development of an active and vociferous civil society in Ukraine. Roman holds a BS in International Trade & Finance from LSU and an MBA in corporate strategy from, University of Michigan Ross School of business. His latest work engagements include serving clients in Eastern Europe as a strategy consultant at BCG and advising top government officials on economic reforms as part of Foundation for Effective Governance. Roman’s expertise lies in energy, organizational design, post-merger integration, performance measurement and project management.

Seamus O’Brien

NY Cosmos, Chairman and Managing Partner

Seamus O’Brien has nearly 30-years experience in the global sports business industry. As one of the earliest pioneers in sports marketing and media, he is widely regarded as a key figure in the industry having played a significant role in its evolution over the past three decades. Seamus began his career at Europe’s first satellite sports TV channel Screensport, and later moved to global sports media rights expert CSI, where he oversaw the worldwide television distribution for many of the world’s leading sports bodies and events. These included major European soccer leagues – Italy’s Serie A and the English Football League (forerunner to the English Premier League) which he established as premium sports programming across the world in the 80’s and early 90’s. Inspired by his passion for sport, Seamus founded World Sport Group in Hong Kong in 1992. The company is renowned for many landmark deals which created a legacy for Asia’s major sports. These partnerships transformed the financial stability of the region’s athletes and governing bodies, particularly that of the Asian Football Confederation, which is now recognized as the second most commercially successful of all FIFA Confederations after UEFA. Today, World Sport Group is the largest sports marketing, media and event company in Asia. In 2008, Seamus sold his majority stake in World Sport Group to French media conglomerate Lagardère Group, although he remains its Executive Chairman to this day. Recently, he was also appointed as Executive Chairman to its U.S. sister company Lagardère Unlimited. In 2011, he acquired the major stake in America’s most iconic soccer club – the New York Cosmos – and became its Chairman and Managing Partner, spearheading the re-launch of the Club and its related business in 2013.

Catherine Reilly

Chief Economist of Pohjola Asset Management

Catherine Reilly is Chief Economist of Pohjola Asset Management, one of the largest asset management firms in Finland (currently on a leave of absence). She advises large institutions and pension funds on financial market developments and asset allocation. Before joining Pohjola, she worked at the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy (ETLA), producing economic forecasts on both Finnish and global economy. She has also worked as management consultant at McKinsey & Co. Catherine has a degree of Master of Finance at the Helsinki School of Economics & Business Administration. She currently pursuing her MPA studies at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, with a particular interest in financial market regulation.

Alexander Klimburg

Research Fellow, Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

Alexander Klimburg has been a senior adviser at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs since 2006 and has acted as an adviser to a number of governments and international organizations on issues within international cyber security, critical infrastructure protection, and internet governance. He has participated in international and intergovernmental discussions within the European Union (EU) and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and has been a member of various national, international and EU policy and working groups, as well as track 1/1.5 diplomatic initiatives and technical research groups (including on nation-wide IDS/IPS deployments). He is the principle author of a 2011 European Parliament study, Cyberpower and Cybersecurity, the editor of the NATO-funded National Cybersecurity Framework Manual, as well as a number of other publications.
Previously, Klimburg worked on ICT strategy issues in corporate finance and IT/strategy consulting in Europe and Asia. He holds degrees from the School of Oriental and African Studies and the London School of Economics and Political Science and is a D.Phil. candidate at the University of Vienna

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Writer and Activist, Author of “Infidel”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born American (formerly Dutch) feminist and atheist activist, writer and politician who is known for her critical views critical of Islam, in particular its treatment of the
position of women. The daughter of the Somali politician and opposition leader Hirsi Magan Isse, she is a founder of the women’s rights organisation the AHA Foundation. When she was eight, Hirsi Ali’s family left Somalia for Saudi Arabia, then Ethiopia, and eventually settled in Kenya. She sought and obtained political asylum in the Netherlands in 1992, under circumstances that later became the centre of a political controversy. In 2003 she was elected a member of the House of Representatives (the lower house of the Dutch parliament), representing the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). A political crisis surrounding the potential stripping of her Dutch citizenship led to her resignation from the parliament, and led indirectly to the fall of the second Balkenende cabinet in 2006. Three months she was given Dutch citizenship. In 2005, she was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She has also received several awards, including a free speech award from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the Swedish Liberal Party’s Democracy Prize, and the Moral Courage Award for commitment to conflict resolution, ethics, and world citizenship. In 2006 she published a memoir.
The English translation in 2007 is titled Infidel. As of 2013, Hirsi Ali is a fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, a member of The Future of Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center, and lives in the United States.

Elizabeth Prodromou

Visiting Associate Prof. of Conflict Resolution, The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Co-Chair Southeastern Europe Study Group at the Center for European Studies at Harvard

Dr. Elizabeth H. Prodromou is the Co-Chair of the Southeastern Europe Study Group at the CES at Harvard University and Visiting Associate Prof. of Conflict Resolution at The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy. She is a retired US diplomat, having served (2004-2012) as Vice Chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. She has taught international relations and directed the M.A. Program in International Relations & Religion at Boston University. She has published widely on her research interests, which center on religion and security, democracy and human rights. She is currently expanding her research on “Orthodox constructions of the West,” while also completing a monograph on Church-State Relations in Greece.

Charles Maier

Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History, Havard University

Charles S. Maier is Professor of History at Harvard University, specialised in comparative 20th century European political, economic, and social history; global and international history including comparative empires; Cold War and European-American relations; and German and Italian national histories. He served as Director of the Center for European Studies from 1994 to 2001 and fall 2006, and as Chair of the undergraduate Social Studies Program from 1991 to 1995, and served as acting Chair during 2007-08. Guest Directeur des Etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris in spring 2007. He published Among Empires in spring 2006 and is currently collaborating with William Kirby and Sugata Bose on a world history of the twentieth century and writing on the rise and decline of territoriality and on the history of the modern state. Maier currently teaches undergraduate courses on world history in the modern era, on World War I and World War II, on political trials, and together with Niall Ferguson, a two-semester sequence on international history. He supervises graduate reading fields in early modern and modern international history, modern social and economic history, and German and Italian history. He has directed dissertations on the comparative history of the welfare state, aspects of the Nazi Regime, and the history of the German Democratic Republic, among other topics, and encourages research in the era since 1945.

Peter Hall

Krupp Foundation Professor of European Studies, Harvard

Peter Hall is Krupp Foundation Professor of European Studies in the Department of Government and the Minda de Gunzberg Center for European Studies, as well as Co-Director of the Program on Successful Societies for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Hall is editor of Successful Societies: How Institutions and Culture Affect Health (with Michèle Lamont), Changing France: The Politics that Markets Make (with P. Culpepper and B. Palier), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (with David Soskice), The Political Power of Economic Ideas: Keynesianism across Nations, Developments in French Politics I and II (with A. Guyomarch and H. Machin), European Labor in the 1980s and the author of Governing the Economy: The Politics of State Intervention in Britain and France and more than seventy articles on European politics, policy-making, and comparative political economy. He serves on the editorial boards of many journals and the advisory boards of several European institutes. He is currently working on issues in the methods of political science, the political response to economic challenges in postwar Europe, and the impact of social institutions on inequalities in population health.

Srdja Popović

Chairman and Co-Founder, CANVAS

Srdja Popovic was one of the founders and key organizers of the Serbian nonviolent resistance group Otpor! Otpor!’s work against Serbian president Slobodan Milosovic culminated on October 5th, 2000 when hundreds of thousands of protestors converged upon and took over the Serbian Parliament, effectively ending Milosevic’s rule. After the revolution, Popovic served a term as a member of the Serbian National Assembly 2000-2003 and advisor to the Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. In 2003, Popovic and other former Otpor! activists started the non-profit educational institution the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) (www.canvasopedia.org). CANVAS has worked with people from 46 different countries, including Zimbabwe, Burma, Iran, and Venezuela, spreading the knowledge on nonviolent strategies and tactics that was used by the Serbian pro-democracy movement.His work with them is featured in the Al Jazeera documentary “Seeds of Change.”
In November 2011, Foreign Policy Magazine listed Srdja Popovic as one of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers” of 2011 for inspiring the Arab Spring protesters directly and indirectly and educating activists about nonviolent social change. WIRED Magazine listed him as one of the ’50 People Who Will Change the World’ and in 2012 and 2013 the Peace Research institute Oslo named him a top nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2013 Srdja was named a ‘Young Global Leader’ by the World Economic Forum and has taught classes on nonviolent social activism at Harvard, NYU, Colorado College and Grinnell College. He is also the author of the book Making Oppression Backfire which offers activists tactics and strategies when dealing with harsh oppressive state or security forces.

Noel Maurer

Associate Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Noel Maurer is an associate professor at the Harvard Business School in the Business, Government and the International Economy (BGIE) unit. Maurer earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1997. Between 1998 and 2004 he worked as an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at ITAM, a university in Mexico City. Maurer also worked at an NGO dedicated to helping small rural communities in Chiapas find new business opportunities for their inhabitants. He joined the Business School faculty in 2004.
Maurer’s primary research interest is on how governments protect (or fail to protect) property rights and how do private actors defend their property rights against predatory governments or in the face of political instability? Maurer (co-) authored three books: The Power and the Money, The Politics of Property Rights (the second co-authored with Stephen Haber and Armando Razo), and Mexico Since 1980 (co-authored with Herb Klein, Kevin Middlebrook and Stephen Haber). He is currently researching the history of the U.S. government’s attempts to protect American investors when they venture outside the United States. He is also working on further developing a course on the politics and economics of the energy business.